Celtiberia tourist guide or how to taste a hidden treasure

This It is not a tourist guide to use, as it hides treasures and secrets only suitable to enjoy calmly. Is a complicated frontier story, without lights from the sky. It is a guide for romantic travelers, a “tourism to educate the gaze”.

It’s about the ‘Tourist guide of Celtiberia, an imagined country’ (Ed. Prames) and it encompasses that extension of interior Spain related to the Celtiberians, a terror that captivated Manrique himself. It thus includes the entire province of Soria and part of Teruel, Zaragoza, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Burgos and Segovia, as well as the highlands of La Rioja.

The project, coordinated by Javier Hernández, It started some time ago with the Association of Friends of Celtiberia. A careful work, in its content and format, with a clear objective: “to place Celtiberia, educate the gaze and value eco-heritage”, in the words of Hernández himself. To do this, the guide includes geography, nature, history, art, ethnography, literature and characters.

In those mountains, alcarrias, moors and valleys there are remains of the Celtiberian settlement that, in its splendor, surpassed the Ebro and the borders of the Iberian (Celt). Romanization put an end to it, but its status as a frontier remained: between the Celtic, Basque and Iberian, Hispania Citerior and Ulterior, al-Andalus and the Christian “extremism”.

“I felt bad that they told me that this town has no history. It is what motivated me to participate in this event and get involved in the project,” he confessed Aitor Esteban, spokesman for the Basque Group in Congress, during the presentation of the book. “It is a landscape in which everything evolves, there is nothing frozen in time. The land can be worked, but you have to know where to do it, “added the politician.

Esteban, a lover of history, did not hesitate to vindicate “the torrezno as the energy bar of a lifetime”. And hey, what a great truth.

Thus, the Basque politician defined Celtiberia as “a territory to taste suavecito” and recognized the work and spirit of the residents of the area, “tough, austere people who love their land.” Nails words to praise that inner Spain, which took on even more meaning when it coincided with the day that the Soria Ya! announced his leap into national politics.

Give a voice to interior Spain, put it on the agenda, place it on the map. That’s what jewelry like this guide to Celtiberia does. And the thing is, we already said it at the beginning; no, this is not a tourist guide to use.